Missing girls are keeping the police on their toes. In the last one week, police stations in the city have been flooded with complaints about missing girls. Parents of 30-odd girls, in the age group of 14 to 24, have approached cops during the last week of May and informed them about their daughters, whose whereabouts were not known. These girls had either left their homes or were ‘kidnapped’ by their boyfriends in the last fortnight.

As 10 of these 30 girls are minors, the police have registered kidnapping complaints instead of ‘missing’ complaints. During investigation, cops learned that a majority of these girls were from lower middle class families residing in the eastern part of the city and had eloped with their love interests.

The fresh complaints have only added to the pressure on the police, who are yet to trace 468 girls, who had gone missing from the city in the last 16 months. According to the latest figures released by the women cell of CID (crime), Ahmedabad tops the list of missing and untraced girls between January 1, 2012 and April 30, 2013. According to the figures, 9,970 girls had gone missing from the entire state, including 670 minors. Of these, 8,061 had either returned or were found by police or parents. Thus, the police are yet to find 1,909 girls. Topping the charts, Ahmedabad police need to find 468 girls of these 1,909. Surat follows with 235 missing girls, while Mehsana is third with 105 untraced girls.

To cope with the increasing number of missing girls, CID (crime) is involving NGOs. “We recently tied up with 54 NGOs.We have already established several anti-human trafficking cells to keep a check on the possibility of human trafficking of these missing girls,” said Anil Pratham, inspector general, women cell, CID (crime).